“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

Adlai Stevenson

“In the long run, men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”

Henry David Thoreau

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Immanuel Kant

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

Henry Ford

“Profits are to business as breathing is to life. Breathing is essential to life, but is not the purpose for living. similarly, profits are essential for the existence of the corporation, but they are not the reason for its existence”

Dennis Bakke, Founder of AES

Vision without action is a daydream.

Action without vision is a nightmare.

Japanese Proverb

THINKING

“It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right – especially when one is right.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

George Patton

“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

Henry Ford

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

John F. Kennedy

“Traditional thinking is all about “what is.” Future thinking will also need to be about “what can be.”

Edward de Bono

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

COMPETITION

“And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.”

Andrew Carnegie

“In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.”

Charles Darwin

CHANGE AND LEARNING

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

Jack Welch

“The only person who likes change is a wet baby.”

Mark Twain

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

John F. Kennedy

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

Henry Ford

“I can think of no conceivable reason why an individual should wish to have a computer in his own home”

Ken Olsen, Chairman, DEC, 1977

LEADERSHIP

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

Peter Drucker

“Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”

Peter Drucker

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.”

Peter Drucker

“People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. But the people who get on in this world are those who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them.”

George Bernard Shaw

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

Douglas Adams

“Do not confuse dissent with disloyalty”

Edward Murrow

FAILURE

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Thomas Edison

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Sir Winston Churchill

PLANNING

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

Peter Drucker

“It’s not the plan that is important, it’s the planning.”

Dr Graeme Edwards

“Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get,” said the Cat.
“I really don’t care where” replied Alice.
“Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Lewis Carroll

“If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.”

Chinese Proverb

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke

“Chance favours the prepared mind”

Louis Pasteur

Politicians use data as a drunken man uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination”

Andrew Lang

LIVING

“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”

Henry Ford

“There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.”

George Santayana

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”

Sir Winston Churchill

“The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.”

Socrates

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Gandalf (J. R. R. Tolkien)

“For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously.”